The $17,500 in campaign finance fines that gubernatorial hopeful Dan Maes has agreed to pay is no small penalty.

The fines certainly are not akin to “parking tickets,” as Maes has likened them to, according to a story last week in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

The fines are a response to four alleged violations of campaign finance practices, allegations that Maes did not contest. They involve instances of errors or omissions in campaign reimbursements, accepting illegal contributions and failure to disclose information about donors. The Sentinel reported last week that the Maes campaign sent an e-mail to supporters saying opponents were attempting to make it sound more serious than it was. On Monday, Maes clarified his comments, telling us the violations were akin to a “very large stack” of parking tickets.

Maes said his campaign has rectified the situation, filing reports with corrected information.

Nevertheless, the state’s chief executive has the responsibility to oversee significant expenditures of state money. Colorado has an $18 billion budget, and it’s in bad shape.

That these campaign finance transgressions happened in the first place make us question whether Maes has the ability to handle complex financial matters.

Many were not surprised by the prompt verdict Monday in the sexual-assault case in Denver involving Taylor Swift. A jury of six women and two men concluded within hours that a Denver radio host had groped Swift _ grabbed her butt beneath her skirt during a photo shoot, as his wife stood on the other side of Swift.

Touch not that statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville. Let it stand, but around it place plaques telling the curious that the man was a traitor to his country who went to war so white people could continue to own black people.